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THE ASPEN INSTITUTE

ASPEN SECURITY FORUM 2016

COUNTERING VIOLENT EXTREMISM

Doerr-Hosier Center

845 Meadows Road

Aspen, Colorado

Friday, July 29, 2016

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LIST OF PARTICIPANTS

MONIKA BICKERT

Head of Global Policy Management, Facebook

ED ROYCE

Chairman, House Committee on Foreign Affairs

US Representative (R-CA)

GEORGE SELIM

Director, Office for Community Partnerships

Department of Homeland Security

JESSICA STERN

Fellow, FXB Center for Health and Human Rights

Harvard School of Public Health

Co-Author, ISIS: The State of Terror

NOAH SHACHTMAN

Executive Editor, The Daily Beast

* * * * *

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COUNTERING VIOLENT EXTREMISM

(10:45 a.m.)

MR. WOLFF: If we can have a seat, please. I

think we're all very excited about the next panel. My

name is Evan Wolff. I'm a member of the Aspen Institute

Homeland Security Group and former advisor at DHS for the

first five years.

I'm delighted to introduce our next session,

which is Countering Violent Extremism. What turns a young

man or woman into a terrorist, what are the drivers, what

are the triggers, what are the warning signs, and how can

violent extremism be countered?

Moderating the conversation today is Noah

Shachtman, which we are all very excited about. Noah is

currently the executive editor of The Daily Beast. He

previously served as the executive editor of Foreign

Policy.

But at least to me, my son, and many of us

around the room he's best known for the editor of Wired

Magazine's national security site, The Danger Room, which

covered many great issues and also won the national

magazine award for reporting digital media and an online

journalism award for the best reporting. He's held many

other positions including being a nonresident Fellow at

Brookings and with that I will let Noah take over, thank

you very much.

MR. SHACHTMAN: Thanks

(Applause)

MR. SHACHTMAN: So it's almost become a cliché

of this war on terror that it's a battle of narratives,

right, that it's a fight for ideas for hearts and minds.

But it seems like events in recent months have turned that

cliché into something, I don't know, much more concrete.

You know, we've seen in Paris, and Brussels, and Istanbul,

and Orlando, and San Bernardino, and Nice and the list

goes on and on and on, you know, in so many of these cases

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we're getting young man or young men and women to be

stirred to violence almost with no contact to any sort of

traditional jihadist recruiter or leader and so -- and

that's after hundreds of millions of dollars have been

spent to, you know, fight this battle of ideas, to counter

the narrative.

And it's also after an extremely aggressive law

enforcement push here in the U.S. to catch these sort of

would be jihadists before they get started. And so my

question is: What the heck do we do now? What's to be

done? And is this battle of narratives even winnable? Is

it even one we should be fighting?

So to help sort through that with me I'll start

all the way at the end. We've got Chairman Ed Royce, of

the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. We have Monika

Bickert, the Head of Global Policy Management, of

Facebook. George Selim runs the Office for Community

Partnerships at DHS. And Jessica Stern, author of a great

book on ISIS and also a Fellow at the Harvard School of

Public Health.

Jessica, I'm going to start with you. Do we

have any better sense these days of what's actually

driving radicalization? I mean, for a while it was like

oh, if these guys just get jobs they won't, you know, they

won't be as radical, and that's sort of been cast to the

wayside. There's a sense of oh, well if these -- if

places go from authoritarian to democratic regimes there

won't be, you know, there'll be less radicalism, and

that's sort of proven to be untrue too. Do we have any

sense these days of what's really driving radicalism?

MS. STERN: Well, I think we have to distinguish

between those who are radicalized in the field, in the

middle of a war zone or near a war zone, and those who are

radicalized in the West. It's a very different picture.

Young people are joining ISIS because it's the best job

they can find or they go through their friends. Actually,

that applies across the board. And in neighboring

countries, it's not low GDP, it's not poverty. What we

find is that education itself may be a risk factor in poor

socioeconomic conditions. And the Combating Terrorism

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Center has started to evaluate the intake forms for about

4,000 individuals who joined ISIS. And if you look,

they're better educated than the average education in the

country from which they came, but they are underemployed.

There's also a fascinating new book showing that

engineers are over represented in countries where

engineers are less likely to find rewarding work. But I

think what we're all really interested in now is why are

kids joining in the West? And there, I think, alienation,

a search for identity, discomfiture. Alienation from the

heritage community as well as the country they're living

in, together that's a risk factor.

And also, we have found in a big study of

Children's Hospital, focusing on Somali refugee youth,

who, of course, are being targeted, that time on the

internet is a risk factor. And what makes this so tragic

is these are families that come from war zones. They're

severely traumatized. The mother is likely to think, "My

kid's inside on the internet. That means he's safe."

That is the place where the kid is least safe.

MR. SHACHTMAN: That's fascinating and

disturbing. Monika, I think that naturally leads to you.

You know, after every one of these attacks, right, media

outfits like mine go on and we immediately find that the

attackers or their friends have been posting all kinds of

really extremist stuff.

So in a sense it's not that hard to find after

the fact. I guess the question is: What do you do

beforehand? How do you cut off some of this messaging

while, of course, respecting free speech rights? Because,

you know, Facebook has been very strict about policing

copyright infringement and policing nudity, and yet these

extremist messages still seem to linger on.

MS. BICKERT: Well, I would go back to what you

said when you first introduced the panel, which was that

there's been a very extremely aggressive push by law

enforcement to address this problem. There's been an

extremely aggressive push by not only Facebook, but social

media companies, to try to address this problem. We know

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that these groups are going to try to use our platforms,

our services, to try to radicalize and recruit new

members.

You mentioned -- although I would say I would

disagree with you exactly on what you would find on

Facebook after attacks, but certainly after there are

attacks we do see people praising attackers. We do see

them praising the leader of ISIS or extremist ideologies,

generally. And so the challenge really is finding that

content and removing it.

And just to give everybody a sense of the scale

of what we're talking about, Facebook alone has more than

1.6 billion people using the service. Which means we have

billions of posts every day, billions of photos every day.

These are in languages all over the world. Four out of

five people using Facebook are not in the U.S. So when

you think about trying to stop terrorist propaganda, even

if you think about it just at Facebook -- we have on our

staff Brian Fishman, counter terrorism expert. We talk to

Jessica and other experts all the time to try and make

sure that we're up-to-date on all the trends and doing

everything we can to find this content.

But realistically speaking, the internet is a

big place. Even if Facebook, and Google, and Twitter were

perfect at removing this content and removing it

immediately, you have literally thousands of websites,

gaming platforms, messaging services where this sort of

content and the recruitment is going to be something that

the extremists will try to exploit.

So that is why in addition to trying to remove

the content we're so focused on creating a place where

those who, especially young people, who would stand up

against extremism, really can find their voice and can

reach their target audience.

MR. SHACHTMAN: And what does that mean?

MS. BICKERT: That means, for one thing, trying

to reach young people, tell them that Facebook, Instagram,

YouTube, Twitter are places that they can use to counter

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extremism and then teaching them how to do it. That means

everything from technical assistance, "This is how you use

Facebook," to teaching them specifically what works to

counter extremism.

For the past two years we've been researching

that and I think you've seen, and I know some of you in

the room have seen research that we've published on this,

that we've done in collaboration with a group called Demos

in the U.K. We've looked specifically at six different

countries in our most recent wave of research: France,

the U.K., Morocco, Tunisia, India and Indonesia. And

we've analyzed speech against extremism, with a focus on,

you know, speech against some of the extremist groups that

we're seeing right now and identifying what are the common

factors among the posts that tend to do well.

And that means, it's hard to say, what does it

mean to do well? Because you don't know if you're

actually changing somebody's mind when they see a post.

But we look for things like what is the level of

engagement that a specific post gets from the community?

Who's interacting with it? Is this young people

interacting with it or is this a broader demographic

group?

And then, how well does that speech travel?

Meaning maybe I'm very anti-ISIS and I have a page that's

very anti-ISIS. George is a friend of mine. Jessica

really doesn't know anything about this issue. If he's

sharing my content and Jessica ends up seeing it and

sharing it further then we're really -- the speech is

really traveling and it's reaching people who otherwise

wouldn't have been thinking about this. So this is taking

the power, the amplification power of social media that we

worry so much about and actually turning it into what it

is for the vast majority of people on the internet, which

is something very positive.

I'll just mention one program that we're doing,

and that program is something that George Selim is also

involved in, and this is the Peer-To-Peer Challenge, run

by Adventure Partners, where we have integrated into

university curricula around the world, universities around

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the world, a counter-extremism course that is a semester

long, during which students learn about how to counter

extremism. For instance, they see our research, what is

working. They get expertise in how to use social media.

They get some ads credit so they can try to find the

target audience. They get some Marketing training, and

then they launch this campaign. And at the end of the

semester they show us what they've done. And it's a

competition. So we started off the program as a little

bit small. I think we had 45 universities in the fall, 54

in the spring. In the fall, just for the portion that

Facebook funds, which is the international portion, and

George can talk about the domestic portion, we will have

120 universities in 50 countries, with regional play-offs

in Oman and in Europe.

So, these students and the things that they

produce are incredible. The team from Afghanistan, having

watched the last panel, the team from Afghanistan won the

global competition this spring, the Facebook global

competition. They reached more than 5 million people just

through their online campaign. And the online campaign

really took -- its foundation was looking at Islam and

looking at the texts that are very important to them as

Muslims in Afghanistan, and using that as a way to say,

"We stand against extremism and, in fact, to be a good

Muslim, you are against extremism."

Their target audience was religious schools,

religious teachers, religious students, and through the

reach of their social media campaign they got enough

credibility that they actually were able to insert into a

textbook at these schools a chapter about how Islam stands

against extremism. So these results are real and the

program is growing.

MS. STERN: I just want to say that I was a

judge, and it's true, it's fantastic. I wish you all

could see what these kids are doing.

MR. SHACHTMAN: It sounds great, but George is

there any evidence -- I mean, not to be that guy -- but is

there any evidence that any of this actually works? Is

there any data backing this up yet? I mean, you know, I

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think one of the big critiques of CVE Programs has been

there's been tons and tons of money poured into these

things, every one of them sounds like light, and rainbows,

and unicorns when you start out with, and then they don't

really turn out to do very much.

MR. SELIM: Sure. So two responses for that

question. The first is on the measurement side. What

we're doing here in attempting to counter extremism, or to

be much more specific, we're trying to prevent and

intervene in the process of radicalization. And what we

know through social science, research, and the whole body

of knowledge, is it's not a linear process. Someone can

be radicalized, but not necessarily commit an act of

violence.

MR. SHACHTMAN: Sure.

MR. SELIM: Ideology can inspire in a different

way. And so, this arguably is the most complex challenge.

The federal government and industry faces this. How

someone absorbs some piece of information or something

that happens in the world and drives them to walk into a

night club or into their place of work and open fire or

attempt to travel to a foreign land to commit an act of

terrorism or be trained, it's one of the hardest questions

we face, I think, as a society today. Here's what the

data has told us so far. There are a number of root

causes and drivers, as Jessica has pointed out. And so

the U.S. Government has approach domestically on these

efforts has been kind of underpinned by three core

approaches on this.

The first is to communities, at large, we need

to raise awareness on the nature and scope of the threat.

How does radicalization and recruitment happen? What are

the case studies we've seen manifest domestically, not

just in the post-ISIL, early 2014 through today period,

but even prior to that with other sources and drivers of

radicalization -- Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Al Shabaab, and so

on. And so raising awareness on the nature and scope of

the threat, how has it manifested itself domestically?

From the federal government perspective, domestically, at

Homeland Security, providing tools and resources in the

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sense of real life tabletop exercises, community awareness

threat briefings. Homeland Security, just my office

earlier this month, on July 6th, we released $10 million

in grants to support state and local efforts on this,

both law enforcement and municipal officials, not-for-

profit organizations, the universities, who are really

doing pro-active work.

And then the last core component, after you

raise awareness of the threat, you provide tools and

resources, is really to the name of my office, the Office

of Community Partnerships, you help develop those public-

private partnerships that can be sustained over a period

of time to help really address not just the root causes or

drivers, but if someone in a community observes a sign,

sees something that's on the radicalization spectrum,

there's more than one resource of just pick up the phone

and call the FBI or law enforcement.

It's really creating that wrap-around,

comprehensive approach that's inclusive of not just law

enforcement and community, but mental health, social

service, education providers. This is the place where

Homeland Security is moving to, is helping be the convener

of this really multi-disciplinary set of issues.

MR. SHACHTMAN: Got it. But what I'm hearing in

that, or what I didn't hear in that, is there's no hard

data yet on really what works and what doesn't.

MR. SELIM: There's not an overarching measure

that I can say, "In the U.S. here's what we've done" but

what I can --

MS. STERN: But you are funding one.

MR. SELIM: We are funding a number of studies.

MS. STERN: Yes, yes.

MR. SELIM: Go ahead Jessica.

(Laughter)

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MS. STERN: You have just put out an RFP for

universities to try to evaluate the impact of CVE efforts.

And I just want to say yes, with all due respect Noah, it

sounds like a lot of money, but compared with the amount

of money we spend on trying to take out the bad guys,

kinetic operations, this is a drop in the bucket. It's

nothing.

MR. SHACHTMAN: Mr. Chairman, is this even

something, given the fact that we still don't have hard

data, yes, and given the fact that a lot of money has been

spent, like is this even something the federal government

should be doing? Like is this something a bunch of

bureaucrats in Washington should be, you know, trying to

change minds? Isn't the real metric changing action?

Like, who cares what's in these guy's heads? Like, isn't

it really about stopping bad things from happening rather

than people having bad thoughts?

MR. ROYCE: Well there's two points here. One

is for this to be effective you have to have authenticity,

and that means you have to be able to find the jaded

jihadists that have a story to tell that resonates. And

that's not best done in Washington. That's actually best

done working in other countries. And I'll give you --

maybe later we can get into some examples of where that's

been done successfully.

But the second point, I take the point about

kinetic activity, but in a bi-partisan effort of the

Foreign Office Committee, we tried to convince the

Administration, when ISIS was coming out of Raqqa, that

they should be hit from there air in those pickup trucks.

And we watched a period of eight months when city by city,

starting with Fallujah, and ending with Mosul, ISIS

established its caliphate.

Our argument was, "Don't allow it to establish

that caliphate." And our argument also, I think, is when

you have an entity that has developed to the degree and

sophistication to use platforms and social media like none

other that has proceeded it, it is very much in your

interest to counter the narrative that God is on their

side and that they're unstoppable. In other words, they

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should be stopped.

We now have a problem where ISIS is in North

Africa, training 6500 jihadists, West Africa, East Africa,

and Central Asia. In other words they are dispersing

their operations. So this has become a lot more

complicated, because we did not take decisive steps early.

And I'll just sum up with this, we also have bipartisan

legislation to reform the BBG, but also to reform our

efforts in terms of our interaction to counter this

violent extremism.

It's in legislation authored by myself and Eliot

Engel, that's now in the Senate. Walter Isaacson's been

supportive, as has the Aspen Institute, in developing this

legislation and moving it, but our next step in this --

we've put it in the National Defense Authorization Act --

is to get that out on to the President's desk. We really

need to look at what has worked in other countries. Maybe

we can get into that, because I think we have a lot to

learn about their effectiveness in this area and how we

can emulate that.

MR. SHACHTMAN: Okay, I'd love to ask you about

those examples, but I need to ask a follow-up question

first.

MR. ROYCE: Sure.

MR. SHACHTMAN: Are you saying that basically

there's no such thing as successful CVE while Raqqa is

still the capital of the so-called Islamic State?

MR. ROYCE: A part of our difficulty is as long

as they can point to an existing concept of a caliphate,

for those who have been mesmerized around the planet in

Deobandi schools, in these Madrasas that have been funded

through the Gulf States since 1979, you've got a lot of

young graduates of those schools that are coming out

believing in jihad, capable of teaching jihad, becoming

clerics, and those ideas are in the pipeline.

And they are being spread all over, from

Indonesia to West Africa. So the question is, with that

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out there, with those concepts out there, and the use of

the internet by ISIS to build on the support base of those

who believe in that fundamentalism or that radical

jihadist ideology, how best to stop it? It's certainly

not to allow the establishment of a caliphate, because

that makes it very, very credible that this could be the

future.

MR. SHACHTMAN: Right. But now there is a

caliphate, right? And even if it's wiped out tomorrow,

which it's not going to be, then people for decades hence

can point back to it and say, "Ah look at this," you know,

"We got over on them."

MR. ROYCE: Right. It's unfortunate, but at

least we've started the debate now of what we can do in

the Middle East, for example, using MBC, the main station

broadcasting there. Now that's authenticity. Those are

script writers, story tellers that tell their stories up

until Ramadan.

They ran a 20-part series of a drama about what

happens to a family or families where the boys go and join

ISIS, the consequences on the family, the disillusionment

when they come back and see what it's really like. I

would recommend everyone here Edward Husain's book, The

Islamist. There's a story by an Islamist, told to

Islamists. That's who's reading that book. And it is the

disillusionment, and then coming back to Britain and

saying, "Why didn't they teach us British values when I

was in school?" And beginning to understand the

importance of political pluralism and tolerance, these are

the voices that are going to have resonance. These are

the voices we are going to have to basically give a

microphone to --

MS. STERN: I think --

MR. ROYCE: -- without looking like we're giving

the microphone.

MS. STERN: Yeah.

MR. ROYCE: We've got to do this through the

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universities, through philanthropy, through -- you know,

we can do seed funding. Hollywood's got to be involved in

this, and certainly Silicon Valley can be more involved

and already are getting involved.

MS. STERN: Yeah. I think --

MR. SELIM: Can I --

MS. STERN: Oh.

MR. SELIM: Go ahead, please.

MS. STERN: I just wanted to say I think, for

this discussion, I think we really need to distinguish

between what we do outside the United States and what we

do inside the United States. You can't bomb the American

kids who are finding a way to turn themselves into heroes

by killing people in ISIS's name at home. That's not

going to work.

MR. SELIM: Yeah. And just to follow up on two

points the Chairman made. First of all, he's absolutely

right, and as Secretary Johnson said the other night in

his opening remarks, countering violent extremism

domestically has widely been received in a bipartisan

effort. We've received tremendous support from the

Hellenists.

This is a universal set of issue that in terms of

protecting the homeland is not going away anytime soon.

And so the Congress has been very supportive of DHS's

efforts in this regard. But to the last point, a need for

technology, philanthropy, non-traditional sectors to get

involved with the unique security mission, as Jessica

points out, both at home and abroad, that's the future

where these issues are going.

Four years ago, Homeland Security, and Facebook,

and the State Department didn't have a partnership to

promote campaigns and create content on university

campuses across the globe. Today we do. Next year when

we're here there may be other technology and philanthropy

partners, God willing, who will be at the table with

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government, thinking through these really hard problems,

and helping develop technology and social media solutions.

MR. SHACHTMAN: To what extent is that all

undone by a potential president of the United States

demonizing large segments of the Muslim population?

MR. SELIM: Easy question.

(Laughter)

MR. SELIM: So Homeland Security, as I said

earlier, and the protection of the homeland is without

question a bi-partisan set of efforts. There's no

question that countering ideology and preventing and

intervening in the process of radicalization is not a

democrat or republican issue. So to the extent that the

domestic security agencies and agencies that operate

internationally can continue to expand that effort, and as

the Secretary said the other day, not do so in a way that

demonizes or demagogues a particular religion both at home

and abroad. Part of what the mission of Homeland Security

is, is protecting our homeland with respect to civil

rights and civil liberties. And the first 6 years of the

past 10 that I've worked at the Department of Homeland

Security as a career civil servant was in the Civil Rights

and Civil Liberties Office. And so the approach that I

bring to these issues on countering extremism and

preventing radicalization is very mindful of civil rights,

civil liberties, and privacy protections. They're not

mutually exclusive. We can achieve a safer homeland while

protecting civil liberties and not demagoging any segment

of people, like my parents, who immigrated to this

country.

MR. ROYCE: And I think, Noah, Lee Hamilton was

the former Chairman of my committee when I first came on.

I think it was Lee Hamilton and the 9/11 Commission that

said, "You're not going to defeat the enemy," I mean that

report said, "without identifying the problem." And I

think the terms he used, it was close to this, radical

Islamist ideology, which is the same terms that the

continental Europeans use, the U.K. use, he same term,

frankly, that is used in the Middle East. So I understand

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the political question there, but the point is that that

term is already out there and used relatively frequently

in order to define the problem in the rest of the world.

MS. STERN: I think it's important in this

context to understand that ISIS has said that one of its

goals is to destroy the grey -- what they call the grey

zone, which is where Muslims live at ease in the West.

And they say that the reason they are recruiting Western

Muslims to attack in the West is to turn Christians

against Muslims, Muslims against Muslims.

In their latest issue of Dabiq, they have listed

many Muslims living in the West, including Imams, 11

Imams, living in the West, that they will target. They're

targeting Muslim police officers. They have a goal to

increase prejudice against Muslims in the West. It's part

of their management of savagery. It's their plan.

MR. ROYCE: Part of their plan is -- and I saw

this in West Africa years ago, talking to the governor,

the Muslim governor of the state that Boko Haram is now

in. He said, "They're here and they're changing our

culture." And I said, "What are you talking about?" He

said, "I grew up in a Madrasa, being educated. Across the

street there's a new one, 10 times the size with 100 times

the budget, and they're teaching jihad. They are changing

my culture. They're changing our culture, and someday you

will see the consequences of that. They will come for us

first, and then they will come for you." Same thing I

heard in Central Asia, in Kyrgyzstan, in Uzbekistan.

So they are trying to change the culture. It is

a war or a struggle within that culture. What we need to

do is back those who are resisting this effort to change

indigenous Islam in North Africa and West Africa. And

this Islamist attempt, this radical attempt, is what puts

those cultures at risk, and they understand that.

MR. SHACHTMAN: I want to open things up for a

minute to the audience. If you've got questions, raise

your hand. Please make it a question, and not a rant,

rave, or a declaration of principles. Charlie Dunlap?

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MR. DUNLAP: Hi. Charlie Dunlap from Duke Law

School. Last year I asked Jim Comey how come the

government hadn't considered --

MR. SHACHTMAN: Oh, I'm supposed to tell you to

wait for a microphone.

(Laughter)

MR. DUNLAP: Hi. Charlie Dunlap from Duke Law

School. Last year I asked Jim Comey how come they didn't

use the materials to support statute and civil lawsuits to

go after social media that was hosting the -- and it

sounds like the problem is still as egregious as it was

last year as we discussed in the program. Why shouldn't

we be encouraging more civil lawsuits, at least from the

private sector, because that's what changed big

industries, big tobacco, the auto industry, the

pharmaceutical industry. They have to have this

motivation, this financial motivation, to do the things

they need to do to take down the sites. At least sites

reflective of organizations that are on the designated

terrorist organizations, you know, listed by the State

Department. Tell me why I'm wrong with that, or why I'm

right.

MR. SHACHTMAN: I think that's a question for

you Monika.

MS. BICKERT: I'll let George go first.

MR. SELIM: I'll start with one --

MR. SHACHTMAN: Why shouldn't people sue

Facebook for jihadist conflict? That's basically the

question, right?

MS. BICKERT: One thing I want to make really

clear is that the business incentives of social media

companies here are very much aligned with government

incentives in removing this content. This is horrible for

business. None of these companies want it. I run a

working group for social media companies, international

working group, that has been in place now for over a year,

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that has about 20 members large and small. It's

confidential. It's a place for social media companies to

come and meet and talk about best practices in removing

content. And I can tell you without exception, first of

all, every social media company that we've invited to join

has joined, and the conversations have revealed to me,

without exception, that there is not a lack of will to

remove this content.

Now there sometimes are challenges, especially

when you're talking about small companies that don't have

efficient reporting systems, or, you know, I talked about

how Facebook is in so many countries. We have reviewers

that speak more than 40 languages that are reviewing this

content. Smaller companies are not going to have that.

But what can we do as an industry? For one thing, we can

collaborate and help one another identify this content as

quickly as possible.

So ISIS put out a new video a few days ago.

Immediately we're on the phone with other social media

companies saying, "What links are you seeing? Where are

they?" Twitter, who has had a bad rap for the past few

years, one of the things that I do is talk to Twitter on

the phone. And what I have seen time and time again is a

tremendous willingness and eagerness on the part of social

media to make sure that these communities are safe and

that they are removing anything.

And one final thing I'll mention, because you

asked about detailed list. I want to be very clear what

our policies are on this. On Facebook and on Instagram,

we don't allow anybody who's a member of a terror

organization to have any presence on the site. And that

means if the leader of Boko Haram wants to set up a page

on Facebook and talk about how great Aspen is, that

violates our policies, and we would remove it.

If somebody who is not a member of a terror

organization says something that is positive about one of

those groups, or praises a beheading, or even says, "Wow,

cool," or something like that, that is removed as well.

And where appropriate, we also provide information to law

enforcement authorities to stop threats. This is

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something the industry takes extremely seriously.

MR. SHACHTMAN: Okay. Charlie did not get his

question answered, I don't think, but --

MR. DUNLAP: Well, just a quick -- a super quick

follow-up.

MR. SHACHTMAN: Yeah.

MR. DUNLAP: Twitter's a good example. The

lawsuit was filed in January in Florida against Twitter by

the survivors of somebody who said that they were -- that

the killers were radicalized by something they saw on

Twitter. A month later Twitter takes down 125,000

accounts. Why didn't they do that before? I think that

there's a motivation by the, you know, the civil

litigation that will make Facebook have 2,000 people

working to take down, you know, these jihadist sites, and

so forth. Tell me where I'm wrong.

MS. BICKERT: Can I clarify something there?

Twitter didn't take down 125,000 accounts in the span of

the month. Twitter came out with a statement saying, "By

the way, this is some of the stuff that we're doing and

have done over the past year." So again, incentives are

aligned. Social media companies have a tremendous

challenge when -- if you want to provide a space for

people to upload posts dynamically, you think of

something, you don't want Facebook to read it, and scan

it, and approve it, you know, an hour later, you want to

be able to post. That's how we communicate with one

another. And the overwhelming majority of people are

using this to connect with family and friends in very

positive ways. If you want to live in a world that has

that sort of freedom and that sort of communication, that

brings so many positive things to this world, then we have

to acknowledge that there are going to be challenges in

removing this content.

MR. SHACHTMAN: Okay, I want to --

MR. ROYCE: Charlie there may be a solution to

this technically.

20

MR. SHACHTMAN: Yeah.

MR. ROYCE: We've had hearings on this.

Programing is getting awfully close to being capable of

identifying these types of posts and taking it down

instantaneously, automatically. And if we can do this in

conjunction with the Valley, we might be able to come to a

solution here that offers better protection.

MR. SHACHTMAN: Okay, I think Dan -- Oh, sorry.

MR. ALMAN: My name is Eric Alman, with the D.C.

Police Department. My question for you, Ms. Bickert, is

that if Facebook can determine -- because I searched on

Razor, that give me suggested things that I might be

interested in buying that are related to razors, or razor

chargers, or the kind of car I want to drive, why can't

you, with the excellent algorithms you develop, identify

kids that are a potential risk for radicalization and do

something proactive? Not just take down posts, but, you

know, build a risk index that is based on the algorithms

and the searches that Facebook recognizes, and the posts

that people make, so that these people are identified and

proactive efforts can be made to de-radicalize them?

MR. SHACHTMAN: You know I think that's an

excellent question. I'll just build on that. You know,

Facebook's got the most sophisticated facial recognition

system on the planet, it's widely regarded, and so why not

if kid X posts a picture of Abu-Bakr Baghdadi, which is

instantly recognized, why can't they be served up sort of

counter-programing right away?

MS. BICKERT: Great questions, and also the

point about automation is well taken. There are a lot of

misconceptions out there about what we do with automation,

and we, not just Facebook, but across industry, and what

we can't yet do with automation. So first let me say that

automation's incredibly helpful for us in many areas

across policy enforcement, and for many different reasons.

For instance, if we were to remove -- let's say that we do

find that somebody is a member of a terror organization

and we remove that account, or we find somebody who has

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been sharing beheading videos, and that's what his page is

about, and we remove that account, we don't stop there.

We are fanning out and using those as signals to identify

other bad content, other bad accounts that we can then

remove and look at and, if appropriate, send on to

authorities.

One of the challenges that was mentioned in the

back of the room is what do we do pro-actively before

somebody has really hit that point where they're doing

something? And this is hard, because if you're going to

craft your policies in an aggressive way and say, you

know, you share three beheading videos, you're account's

coming down. Well, the price for that is that you don't

see the rest of that escalation, because you stopped that

person here.

And in fact when I talk to people, the Peter

Newmans of the world, and the Jessica Sterns of the world,

and the Erin Zellen's of the world, who really research

this stuff, one of the things they point out is when you

do take down that content at the very initial stage, when

somebody's interacting with it, then you do lose the

ability to see the rest of the escalation. That person

hasn't done anything other than, you know, share a

beheading video and say, "Cool," which either might just

be a teenager who has no particular interest, and that

will go nowhere, but what do you do with that sort of

information?

MR. SELIM: I'd like to say something on that

point.

MS. BICKERT: Yeah.

MR. SELIM: Sorry. One quick point to get in on

this. This is the point that I think I was making

earlier. We can have a great panel on what the right

message or narrative is to counter ISIL radicalization and

recruitment, but that would be a one-dimensional panel.

The way that radicalization and homegrown violent

extremism has manifested itself is there's an online and

there's an off-line component.

22

And so when I'm talking about creating

prevention frameworks in cities and municipalities across

the country, when we're talking about the inclusion of

mental health and social service providers with state and

local law enforcement, religious leaders, and community

leaders, that comprehensive approach to couple the things

that we're doing to promote content online and partner

with industry, that's the comprehensive approach. It's

not just an online piece. There's got to be an offline

piece. And that's where the federal government can help

drive policy and programs, but it's important that they're

implemented at the local level. And that's the unique

nature of this.

MR. SHACHTMAN: We've got time for only one or

two more questions, and I have one of my own that I need

to ask, which is, we've been talking a lot about, you

know, jihadist narratives, right, and jihad extremism, but

as everybody in this room knows we've seen a huge rise in

far right extremism, both in America and in Europe. We've

seen, you know, whether it's a Dylan Roof, or Planned

Parenthood bomber, or attacker, don't we need a CVE for

the White Nationalist Movement, for the all right

(phonetic), doesn't that need to happen --

MR. SELIM: Good question.

MR. SHACHTMAN: -- here?

MR. SELIM: So very quickly. This question

comes up often. As defined in policy, we define violent

extremism as ideologically motivated violence to further a

political goal, irrespective of what that ideology is.

And so when we're raising awareness on the nature and

scope of a threat in a particular community, when we're

providing tools and resources, and building partnerships

to prevent an ideologically motivated act of violence

that's irrespective of ideology from the source, whether

it's a designated foreign terrorist organization, or a

person or group that's aligned with some type of act of

violence in the United States. And so, we set up the

Homeland Security apparatus, as we're working with state

and law enforcement, to address this on the wide scope,

and then you can tailor it by geographic area depending on

23

how the threat manifests itself.

MR. SHACHTMAN: Mr. Chairman, that has been --

this sort of talking about violent extremism, as opposed

to honing just in on Islamic radicalism, that has, in the

past, for your party, been a -- that's been seen as a

mistake. Do you think that --

MR. ROYCE: Well let me understand this, because

the FBI was established originally to do something about

the Ku Klux Klan, right?

MR. SHACHTMAN: Right.

MR. ROYCE: And that was very much supported by

my party.

MR. SHACHTMAN: Yes.

MR. ROYCE: I don't know how my party gets

involved in this --

MR. SHACHTMAN: No, no, no. In other words

they're talking about, that talk of CVE, without any

mention of Islamic extremism that a -- well, anyway.

MR. ROYCE: Let me put it this way. We have a

long history of using law enforcement, starting with the

establishment -- the Klan was the big original concern

here, and the damage it did in the United States. And

there are still elements out there

MR. SHACHTMAN: Yeah.

MR. ROYCE: And to the extent that law

enforcement can follow that, to the extent that we can

knock that down, we need to.

MR. SHACHTMAN: I guess what I'm saying is do

you believe that resources that are currently being put

towards anti-Islamic radicalism, countering violent

extremism, should also be put towards anti-White

Nationalism?

24

MR. ROYCE: I just explained that. Obviously,

you look at where the attacks are coming from, and because

of the history of the Klan, because of the violence that

they used as a methodology, our government over the years

developed a very effective strategy for infiltrating that

and for basically taking out their capability for the most

part. They are still remnants of it. We are going to,

because of the internet, and because of the evolution of

the internet, especially with encryption, is going to

allow people who want to use violence towards their ends

to figure out new ways to communicate, to recruit. We're

up against some major challenges here.

MR. SELIM: And just to --

MR. ROYCE: And that's why I appreciate this

panel and the Aspen Security Forum here getting into the

details.

MR. SELIM: Just to make one point very clear.

The number one threat to the homeland is ISIL's ability to

recruit and radicalize. And that's where Homeland

Security's resources are going. To the extent that the

tools and resources that we develop can be used to address

a broad range of threats to not just law enforcement, but

the American public at large, that's what we're in a

position to do.

MR. SHACHTMAN: Got it. Dina in the back.

You've been waiting.

MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: Dina Temple-Raston, with

National Public Radio, I've got two questions. Monika,

first for you, can you talk a little bit about the Demo

report, and particularly what I found interesting in it,

was that it wasn't arguing with people online that was

effective, but, in fact, it was either changing the

subject, or being more positive.

And for you George, since we were here last year

and we were talking about these kinds of issues, what is

really changed is there has been a new look at de-

radicalization of people in this country, particularly in

Minneapolis, and a new discussion about off-ramping.

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Jessica can probably help with this too. Can you talk a

little bit about that, because I think we tend to think

that nothing has moved forward in the past year, and I

think actually there has been some movement on this.

Thanks.

MS. BICKERT: The report -- thanks for the

question. The report is interesting in a couple of

respects. One thing that we found from analyzing speech

against extremism that does well, is, first of all, it is

very localized. If you look at what works in Morocco, it

is not necessarily the same sort of thing that works in

France. There are different types of content that people

want to interact with. We also did find, however, that

there were some similarities. And one thing that we saw

across all the countries was, as Dina said, that the tone

mattered very much. People tend to interact with content

that is positive, humorous, gets them to think about

something in a new way, maybe ask a question.

They don't tend to interact with content that is

negative. So if somebody sees a post that they think is

Islamophobic, for instance, and they respond to it with

some sort of nasty attack or "You're a this," or "You're a

that," that sort of content isn't likely to change the

first person's mind, it's not likely to be shared.

If, instead, we see people posting messages that

change the narrative in a slight way, or are positive or

humorous, we see that being successful. And one area

where -- one country where I'll point to that is in

Morocco. Morocco and Tunisia we saw that political events

abroad really drove counter-speech creation and also drove

interaction with it. But in doing so it was the post that

received the most interactions were not those that were

negative, they could be negative about events overseas,

but those that actually took it in a different direction,

made it positive. And that's something that I think the

university students through Peer-To-Peer have shown --

MR. SELIM: Absolutely.

MS. BICKERT: -- a unique ability to understand

and to do naturally.

26

MR. SELIM: I associate myself with those

comments completely. Let me start, and Jessica feel free

to jump in. Since last year -- thank you for your

question on this -- I wear two hats at DHS. One hat is

the Director of the Office of Community Partnerships, but

since then we've also created a new Countering Violent

Extremism Task Force that's compromised of over 10

departments and agencies, to include the FBI, the Justice

Department, the National Counter-Terrorism Center, as well

as non-security agencies as well, Department of Education,

Health and Human Services, and others. And so one of the

key units or lines of efforts that we're focused on is

exactly the concept that you pointed out, is

interventions. And we've heard from community-based,

primarily Muslim community-based organizations, from

Montgomery County, Maryland, to Los Angeles, who want to

develop their own intervention models, community-lead

intervention models, and to what extent can the Department

of Homeland Security or the federal government support

those community-lead initiatives. We've got a task force

set up. We're putting out some grants to resource those

community-lead efforts. And hopefully by next time this

year we will have some real positive data to show.

MR. SHACHTMAN: Okay. We now have a sign being

shown to us that says zero minutes really remaining, so I

think we'd better get out of here. I want everybody to

thank our panelists for what I thought was a really

fascinating discussion.

(Applause)

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